ProMusica offers free concerts at Franklin Park Conservatory

Wednesday

Aug 6, 2014 at 12:01 AMAug 6, 2014 at 10:36 PM

With this year's Summer Music Series, the orchestra will present concerts at 8 tonight, Saturday and Sunday. The series is to be taped by WOSU Public Media for broadcast on Oct. 24 on WOSU-TV (Channel 34).

Since 2012, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra has made the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens its home away from home.

With the illuminated John F. Wolfe Palm House as a backdrop, the orchestra performs its Summer Music Series concerts at twilight.

“We play in a time in the evening where, during the concert, actually, the sun starts to set and night falls,” said David Danzmayr, conductor and music director. “And that’s a very, very special and unique experience.”

The nocturnal setting has proved popular with an audience beyond classical-music aficionados.

“What the series does is it gets ProMusica in front of an audience that tends to be far removed from those that come to the Southern Theatre, for instance, or the (Pontifical College) Josephinum,” said principal cellist Marc Moskovitz, referring to two of the orchestra’s venues.

With this year’s Summer Music Series, the orchestra will have another chance to expand its following. The concerts will take place at 8 tonight, Saturday and Sunday.

In years past, the series’ concerts were spread throughout as many as four weeks. This time, they will take place in close succession.

The series is to be taped by WOSU Public Media. A program of highlights is scheduled for broadcast on Oct. 24 on WOSU-TV (Channel 34). The concerts, therefore, need to look similar, said Executive Director Janet Chen.

“If you do the concerts too far apart,” she said, “the time that the sun sets and the atmosphere can be very different.”

The musical content of the series is eclectic: Different works will be performed each night.

All concerts, however, will include one work highlighting a ProMusica soloist.

This evening, the musicianship of principal flutist Katherine DeJongh will be featured in a performance of Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra.

“He’s a master at how he scored it, because he uses the flute with a full orchestra,” DeJongh said. “It’s incredible, the sound and the volume that he gets out of the orchestra without overpowering the flute.”

Tonight’s program will also include Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber and Symphony No. 36 by Mozart.

On Saturday, Moskovitz will be front and center in a performance of Friedrich Gulda’s Concerto for Cello and Wind Band — an audience favorite last season, when the cellist also performed it.

Gulda’s Austrian heritage is evident in the work, Moskovitz said.

“Gulda brings in just a bagful of ideas,” he said. “Yodeling sounds, there are train sounds, ... beer-hall tunes.”

Also to be played on Saturday are The Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave) by Mendelssohn and Symphony No.38 by Mozart.

Concertmaster Katherine McLin will take a trip down memory lane during Sunday’s concert, when she and assistant concertmaster Marjorie Bagley will headline a performance of Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins.

“It was the first concerto I performed publicly, when I was in the third grade, and is one of the concerti I have performed most often, at least 15 times (I’ve lost count),” McLin said in an email.

Preceding the concerto on Sunday will be a section from The American Scene, composed by William Grant Still — who, along with Liebermann and Barber, is one of three American composers represented in the series.

On the heels of two nights of Mozart, the concluding work on Sunday will be courtesy of Beethoven.

“On the first setup, we had actually three Mozart symphonies,” Danzmayr said. “And then I thought maybe that’s a little bit unifying and too much.”

Instead, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 will be performed.

The music might be intense, but the atmosphere is decidedly laid back.

“If you have kids who want to go to a concert or hear music, they can go, and you don’t really have to be worried if they get up and run around, because that’s completely allowed,” DeJongh said.

And, in what is billed as an “Orchestra Scavenger Hunt,” cutout instruments will be hidden in the park for children to find.

“It gives them a chance to explore the grounds,” Chen said, “but also be able to identify musical instruments, so there’s a learning perspective.”